Call the Doctor!

19. Heart-to-heart

Flashback

Finished doing the laundry and washing dishes, Minhee plopped down herself on the couch next to Luhan who was eyeing something on his phone screen. Luhan looked sad, which was out of his character according to Minhee. As far as she knew, Luhan was only capable of looking mean, cocky, and everything annoying. But this time he seemed so emotional in a good kind of way that Minhee could not decipher.

Curious of what made Luhan look that way, Minhee scooted closer and took a peak of the phone screen. There she saw a woman and a little boy. Minhee assumed that the boy might be Luhan as they resembled a lot; things just did not change so much in Luhan's facial feature. But then about the woman, Minhee was not sure of her identity yet. So, she decided to ask.

"Who is it?" Minhee pointed at the woman in the picture.

"My mom." Luhan replied without averting his gaze from the picture.

"Isn't this picture taken in this city, somewhere? I seem to know this place." Minhee said again, frowning a little as she inspected the background of the photo.

"Yeah, we took the photo nearby. I used to live here when I was young by the way."

"Aren't you Chinese?"

"My father is, but my mother is from around here."

"I see." Minhee slowly nodded, letting the new information sink in. "How long did you stay here back then?"

"I was born here and left to China when I was 11." Luhan said, still with a long face which Minhee came to realize its very reason.

Looking at Luhan in the eye, Minhee asked carefully. "You miss your mother?"

"Yeah." Luhan showed her a small smile.

"I guess you should go home and meet her soon after graduation."

"No."

"Why?"

"My mother's not in China. She's gone, a year ago due to illness. I don't know the exact real cause of her death, but that's what my father's people told me. My father had not met her for almost 5 years since I was taken from her. She must've been dying of loneliness here."

"That was awful." Minhee muttered, her eyes were started to brim with tears. She did not know why, but she could feel Luhan's pain for real – so much real like it was hers. "Why would your father do that?" She breathed out.

"He's an asshole, that pretty explains why he had done everything he did. When I was still here with my mom, I only met him once in a year and I didn't remember any sweet memory or sort of thing with him. He usually just came to our home in the morning, took us to dinner afterwards, then he would be back to China in the midnight."

"He only visited you for a day?" Minhee widened her eyes in disbelief.

"Yeah, so don't expect me to have any kind of personal attachment with him. That's just too impossible." He shrugged.

"Besides, I hate him so much from the very first time I met him in China. That time, I finally found out that he had a new wife with a younger daughter, and that angered me the most. That old jerk turned his back on my mother, threw her away, just to marry another pathetic woman." Luhan's jaw hardened, faraway look in his eyes.

"I was only taken there to China because he needed me – he needed a son, to be his successor to run his petty business. And of course, I won't grant his wish, not after he made my mother gone." The bitterness in every word coming out of Luhan's mouth was just so obvious. He did hate his father so much he could not hide it.